Читать книгу Parade of the Empty Boots - Charles Alden Seltzer - Страница 6

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When Brent Stoddard first saw the girl she was standing, poised on a bank of the Mississippi River at the edge of a deep dark pool, ready to plunge. She was fully clothed but barefoot. She was not the girl of the photograph, not Marie Villers. And she did make the plunge into the water. A long straight dive, knifelike and deep. She disappeared. The water rippled.

Women are strange creatures, he thought. Going swimming with her clothes on. Not many clothes. A sort of wrapper, of gingham, perhaps, but not much underneath it because when she had stood poised the lines of her figure were clear. She’d need dry things when she came out, wouldn’t she? No figuring women.

She came up. He thought she would swim; instead, she drew in a great deal of water and began to strangle. It was deliberate, grim. She meant to drown herself.

If he had had her on the bank now he’d have given her a rope’s end upon the rounded part of her anatomy revealed most distinctly by the wind-swept garment when she had poised just before the dive. But before he could chastise her for being a fool he must get her out. There was a sound of swift unbuckling as he tossed his gun and cartridge belt into the lush grass at the river’s edge, slipped off his vest containing the photograph and the letters, and, still burdened with the three thousand dollars of double eagles, went in after her.

She fought him like a wildcat, but in the end he had got her out, and now she was lying on the grass at the water’s edge and he was lying beside her, holding her, to keep her from doing it all over again, and she was glaring at him from a pair of snapping dark eyes, and he was pretending to be unaffected by the torrent of epithets she was applying to him.

“Lemme up, you damn devil!” she gasped. “Don’t you be a-holdin’ me hyah a-lookin’ at me. I ain’t got hardly no clothes on.”

“I’m not scandalized,” he told her. “I’m not even interested, except in keeping you from making a fool of yourself.”

She half believed him, for she stopped struggling and critically inspected him. She caught her breath; her eyes widened, glowed with interest. He’s handsome, she thought. His dripping hair, close cut, was dark with golden-brown tones in it where the sun struck it. Dry, it would be brown. Eyes a clear blue, deep set, twinkling now with lazy, half-contemptuous amusement. A strong, lean face and a mouth as wayward as a woman’s. A bronzed giant. Clean.

He saw the changes in her eyes but pretended he did not. They were the eyes of a wild, frightened young animal, bearing the appeal of unscathed and unspoiled femininity. Deep in them was the man-fear.

She would be a beauty except for her too-uptilted nose. The freckles around her eyes made them browner and gave them a penetrating, quizzical squint. She was built like a boy except for her young firm breasts and soft well-rounded throat. Her hair, brown as his own, was cascaded in wet wavy streamers over her shoulders.

“What yo’ aimin’ to do, stranger?” she inquired. She was rigid but momentarily passive.

“I’m aiming to keep you from doing it again.”

She studied his face. She hadn’t known there were men like him. She wouldn’t have wanted to leave the world.

“I’m over it,” she said.

“Certain?”

“Sartin.”

He released her. She went to a flat rock, seated herself, spread the gingham garment out to catch the intense rays of the sun, ran her fingers through her hair in an effort to dry it and restore it to some semblance of order, meanwhile watching Stoddard, who sat down on the grass, emptied the water from his boots, placing them so that the sun would shine into them. He took off his socks, wrung the water out of them and spread them out on the grass. He picked up his hat, vest, cartridge belt and gun, laid them in the grass and stretched out beside them, face down, the sun shining on his back. In ten minutes his back was burning. He turned over and shielded his eyes with his hands.

The heat in this South country was different. Different from the dry heat of Oklahoma. He had discovered that while riding through hundreds of miles of timber and swamp land along the Arkansas River. Wilder than Oklahoma, peopled by hill folk—who peered at you like rabbits from their warrens, their noses twitching as if for a scent to identify you. A hell of a country for a white man.

The girl on the rock was drying her hair, running her fingers through it. He watched while she coiled it around her head and tucked in the loose ends.

“So you wanted to die,” he said. “Why?”

“Thet’s a fool question.” But she answered it. “ ’Cause I didn’t want to live.”

Certainly she hadn’t wanted to give up her life because she’d seen too much of life. That would be a reason. He suspected she hadn’t seen anything of life. Men would be willing to teach her, but he was certain none had. He read that in the blushes that were coming, in the way she kept pulling her garment up around her throat to cover her partly exposed breasts, in the way she shrank under his frank gaze.

“You’re not so awfully old,” he said.

“Seventeen.”

“You live around here?”

She studied him for a time in silence.

“Air yo’ one of Jim Craftkin’s men?”

He shook his head.

“Or Vauchain’s?”

These names had been mentioned in Marie Villers’ letter to her uncle. So he was down in their country at last. And this girl feared them.

She believed him.

“If yo’ ain’t, I reckon I kin tell yo’ what’s happened. I’ve bin wantin’ to. Yo’ ever heerd of Vauchain or Craftkin?”

“No,” he lied.

“Then yo’ must live a long way from hyah. Whar yo’ from?”

“I’m from Oklahoma.”

“Yo’ name?”

“Brent Stoddard. Now, yours?”

“Allie Tuttle. My pap is Bill Tuttle.”

“Where’s your pap now?” he urged.

“Pap was run off last night. Him and Maw.”

“You mean they ran off and left you?”

“They was run off, I told yo’. Slade Forbush and some of Craftkin’s scum druv’ up last night jest afore dark with their wagons. They knocked Pap down and throwed him in one of the wagons; they tied Maw up and killed the dawgs and loaded all the old traps thet we didn’t want into one of the wagons, leavin’ the best stuff in the house. Slade Forbush locked me in a bedroom, and then they sent Pap and Maw drivin’ away with the wagon of old traps. They threatened to shoot ’em if they come back or even turned to look around. The same thing hes heppened to nearly all the folks livin’ in this hyah country. Craftkin is a land-grabber, and thet’s the way he gits aholt of other people’s property. It don’t do no good to fight him. Them thet has fit has been killed.”

“So your mother and father haven’t come back?”

“They don’t dast to. Forbush and his men would kill ’em.”

Stoddard guessed that what had happened to her, following the departure of her parents, was what had prompted her to try to commit suicide. He waited, and presently she told him very frankly:

“Afteh Pap and Maw left, Forbush come into the bedroom and said I was goin’ to be his woman. He was goin’ to sleep with me last night. He took all my clothes but this hyah wrapper. Then he left me and said he’d come back later. I heerd him and his men drinkin’ and laffin’, but I got out of the winder and sneaked down to the river.”

“You’ve been hiding out all night?”

“Shuah. You don’t reckon I’d go back theah and let Slade Forbush paw me around!” Darn him, she thought, does he think I’m that kind of a girl?

He didn’t. What he was thinking was that she was more vehement than seemed necessary, as if she sought to emphasize her virtue. Well, there were virtuous women. Usually you know them when you see them. Not always. He’d been fooled. But virtue militantly guarded was a new experience to him, and refreshing.

“Not Forbush.” He hesitated and saw her eyes flash as he dryly added: “Nor nobody else.”

“Thank yo’.”

He got the impression that she valued his high appraisal of her character.

“Forbush and his men have been searching for you, I suppose?”

“I heerd ’em beating the brush half the night.”

“How many of them?”

“Thar’s three o’ ’em. Thar was a dozen or more at fu’st. They rid away down the river road toward Chandler. I heerd ’em say they was intendin’ grabbin’ some other places.”

Chandler was the town Stoddard was looking for. That was the postmark on Marie Villers’ letter.

Their clothing was almost dry now. Allie’s hair glowed duskily; she noted the whiteness of his forehead above the ring of bronze below his hatband, and his glistening, wavy, disordered brown hair, which made him seem almost boyish. But the blue eyes were hard now and coldly thoughtful. They were not the eyes of a boy.

Damned shameful treatment! After all, she was nothing but a child. Primitive, but wanting to be decent. The damned scoundrels!

“You expect to spend the rest of your life hiding out in the brush?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t be hyah now if it hadn’t been fer yo’.”

“You can’t stay here forever.”

“As soon as yo’re gone I’ll do it ag’in.”

She sat on the rock vainly trying to smooth the wrinkles out of her wrapper, watching him, blushing frequently. She was weighing her problem, he decided, and was appalled by the desperate extremity in which she found herself. Still watching her, he saw her cheeks flush crimson, yet she met his gaze steadily.

“I’d be yore woman—if you’d hev me,” she said.

Poor little beggar, he thought. She’s willing to accept me as being the lesser of two evils. A straight business proposition. He could take her upon his own terms. The trouble was, he didn’t want her. Not that he was a saint or that she wasn’t desirable, but because one night at a campfire he had studied the photograph of a woman.